Page 138 of Devoured

She doesn’t so much as blink. Calix curses.

I remove my hand. “Where was she when you found her?”

“Her room.”

“And before that?”

Calix crosses his arms, and a bolt of dangerous electricity—of fury—crackles around him. “How should I know?”

I loose a frustrated breath. “She is in your care, Calix. She’s new to our way of life. When you bit her and your souls mixed—”

“I get it.” Calix pinches the bridge of his nose with another curse. “Is there a way to help her, or not?”

His muscles tense beneath his shirt, his other hand clenched in a hard fist. I remember the young boy who cowered in the halls—shorter, smaller than everyone else—and crawled into bed with me on the worst nights. The nights when I would stitch his wounds, but they would keep bleeding. The nights when the courtiers used silver or wolfsbane to hurt him, and he really thought he might die.

Looking at Calix now, there is almost none of that boy left. Now he is bigger and stronger than everyone else. Now I don’t know that this place can survive him.

And he no longer seeks refuge with me. Except—he’s here, isn’t he? Out of everyone in this castle, he brought Arielle to me.

A feeling stirs in my chest, faint but persistent, like an ember catching after years of barren ash. Hope. Calix brought Arielle to me. Calix is starting to trust me again. There might still be hope for me.

I sit beside the girl and think. And think. Calix taps his foot on the floor impatiently. “Surprisingly, that doesn’t help me,” I tell him. He gives me a swift middle finger. I give it right back to him.

“After I completed the First Rite, I had moments where my powers would overtake me,” I say slowly. “Sybil never knew what to do about it either. Do you remember? She always said there is a limit to our powers, and I was drowning in my own.”

Calix meets my gaze, understanding dawning in those red eyes. “Your comas.”

“I was trapped in my dreams, like my mind was surging with power but I wasn’t strong enough to control it. Sybil always said I would burn out if I couldn’t stop it. For months, my power built labyrinths while I slept, and I couldn’t find my way out of them.”

“Your longest lasted two weeks.” Calix’s gaze slides back to Arielle. “You think that’s happening to her?”

“It is, quite literally, my only idea.” I lift a shoulder with a sigh. “She and I share the same constellation. Our gifts are born of the same family, and she’s powerful. It’s possible that she’s… stuck.”

“So how do we wake her up?”

“Sybil always left me to wake on my own.” She was testing me. There was no point in my survival if I was weak enough to succumb. But—she loved me. I know that too. In her twisted way, I know Sybil loved me.

And I killed her.

Shifting away from Calix, I rub my tired eyes as he says, “I don’t want to leave her like this, and Sybil shouldn’t have left you like that either. She was a shitty mother to both of us.”

I still at his words. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me in months.”

He grunts. Not quite a laugh, but close enough. “Maybe I’m just buttering you up so you’ll save Arielle.”

“You have never once buttered me up. Believe me, I would’ve welcomed it.”

“You’re forgetting the time I convinced you to dive to the bottom of the faerie sea. We were searching for—”

“Megalodons,” I finish for him with a nod. “I remember. However, I jumped in because I knew you would follow. Not because you told me I was the bravest, coolest, most amazing cousin in the whole world.” I glance at him with an insufferable smirk.

He rolls his eyes. “You’re embellishing.”

“That’s what makes me such a good storyteller. It’s all about entertaining, Calix. You want a captive audience. You want to enrapture them.”

He huffs, although it sounds less annoyed and more amused. “Could you maybe try enrapturing Arielle out of her head?”

“Fine, fine.” I lift my hands in surrender, feeling lighter than I have in years.